Dan Carter
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prairiebotanist.com
Dan Carter
@prairiebotanist.com
750 followers 670 following 690 posts
Ecologist of Midwestern fire-dependent ecosystems & volunteer land steward @ Mukwonago River Oak Barrens. Opinions mine. Among them is the need to stop viewing grasslands, savannas, & woodlands through a productivist lens. Ban AI. He/Him
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Apparently parents in my school district are offended that red oaks are monecious--they have both male and female reproductive organs. Wishtree was assigned to all students and their families to read together. #Wishtree #bookbans #oak #Kettlemoraine #Wisconsin #Waukesha
Dear Dousman Families, Back in September, Dousman Elementary and the PTO began communicating their interest in a one-book community read....Copies of the Wishtree were sent home ahead of time so families could decide how and when they wanted to participate. This activity was also planned alongside the school’s book fair to support a strong reading culture in the building. We have since received concerns about the book Wishtree.... As families began reading the book, three concerns were shared with the school or via social media. The first was the way the main character, a tree, introduces itself as biologically male and female. The second was the storyline involving a religious minority family experiencing discrimination. The third was that the tree describes keeping secrets, which some families felt sent a message that was not appropriate for a school wide read. Given the concerns that have been shared, the district is taking the time to look carefully at the book and its use in our schools. We take the concerns that families have raised seriously, and when questions arise about the appropriateness of a book or material, we use our established review process.... Wishtree will move into that formal review process. The outcome may include keeping the book with conditions, limiting its use to specific settings, or removing it as a district resource.... During the review, the book will not be used as a building wide selection.... We view this as an opportunity for the district, the school board, and our community to work together. We appreciate the feedback that families have offered. Families are an essential part of the education process and your input helps us ensure that materials are age appropriate, reflect community expectations, and support a positive learning environment. Thank you for your continued partnership. If you have questions or would like to discuss this further, please reach out. "As families began reading the book, three concerns were shared with the school or via social media. The first was the way the main character, a tree, introduces itself as biologically male and female. The second was the storyline involving a religious minority family experiencing discrimination. The third was that the tree describes keeping secrets, which some families felt sent a message that was not appropriate for a school wide read."
November 20, 2025 at 12:08 AM
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It is the ecological and ritual season of burning. The most salubrious time to burn. Coarse stems--even seeds--stand. Terricolous lichens and bryophytes survive. Larvae rest cosy in their galls. The stage is set for next season's abundance. #Prairie #Savanna #RxFire #MukwonagoRiverOakBarrens
Bright flame in the dark of late evening creep into the wind over fallen bur oak litter and short, herbaceous plants Flaming fronts from stripping ignitions converge at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens on 11/13/25. The entire foreground burned on 11/13. This shot was taken 11/17. Because this is not a productive site and it was burned last year, intensity was low, leaving even the seed heads of gray goldenrod unburned.
November 17, 2025 at 9:42 PM
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Very small burns, but if we remove buckthorn (glossy and common here) and there is enough fuel to burn in fall, we do, and then we augmentively seed in late fall with species that were likely once present but extirpated by fire exclusion / shade / litter / past grazing / etc.
Volunteers supervise fire a low line of fire as it creeps through bronze, crunch black and Hill's oak leaf litter. After the burn the ground is mostly black and bare and will be ready to receive seed, though some patches of leaf litter persisted.
November 5, 2025 at 1:08 AM
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My happy place these days. Fall colors and textures. Home to many beings. #MukwonagoRiverOakBarenns #ThePrairieEnthusiasts #Savanna #Prairie
View of recovering oak barrens at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens with soft plumes of gray goldenrod (mostly, a little tall goldenrod up front), gold and red hues of uniform bristleberry, and mahogany and russet marcescent foliage of black oaks. All under a blue sky with a few puffy cumulus and lit by the low autumn sun.
October 31, 2025 at 12:30 AM
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Last Friday during a volunteer work party at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens we found this blue spotted salamander in a piece of partially burried rotten wood. We were physically pulling invading glossy buckthorn. ...another reason why I favor slower approaches to big machines with grindy bits.
A blue spotted salamander with light blue spots over a back background resting on some moist moss on the outide of the rotten wood where it was found.
October 28, 2025 at 11:48 PM
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The first hard freeze was last night. We burned some sedge meadow today.
October 24, 2025 at 10:44 PM
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Ordered Symphyotrichum ericoides. Received mix of S. erioides and S. pilosum. Booooo. It's a nursury that produces excellent plants that I've had good experience with, so we'll see what they say. #nativeplants
Inflorescence of heath aster on left with small capitula with short rays and frost aster at right with larger capitula with longer rays. Heath aster capitulum from below at left with recurved, blunt involucral bracts. Frost aster capitulum at right with pointy involucral bracts that are ascending to divergent immediately below the rays.
September 25, 2025 at 11:47 PM
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A quick comment on #climate #resilient #landscapes. The #Driftless Area of Wisconsin is considered have some inbuilt resilience owing to its varied aspects, slopes, and soils. Perhaps as it warms more xerophytic vegetation (prairie, oak savanna, oak woods) on S and SW aspects can expand. 1/4
Leadplant dying its slow death in the shade under ironwood and maple colonizing a sandy and rocky south slope in Vernon County, WI. Maple leaves litter the ground, because they are being shed early in response to a dry spell. Other prairie plants in the vicinity were hoary puccoon, purple prairie clover, side-oats grama, big bluestem, and thimbleweed. Leadplant with an ironwood trunk immediately behind it and a big, leafy Leatherwood (Dirca palustris) immediately behind that. Simply nuts. It wasn't the only leatherwood marching from what was presumably their cool, moist refuge around some rock outcrops on the steep north slope of this ridge.
September 18, 2025 at 11:54 PM
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BAD photos, but first time for me coming across Bartonia virginica, here in moist, sandy area under white oak...more specifically in a little clearing among royal fern, huckleberry, velvet-leaf blueberry, a bristly dewberry. Not a common thing in SE WI.
Four-petaled flowers (just past blooming) borne oppositely along the upper portions of pale lavendar stems with very reduced leaves. A dense patch of Bartonia that appear almost like threads rising stiffly from the earth with their now ripening ovaries held high.
September 17, 2025 at 11:15 PM
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I wonder who made these galls on Symphyotrichum ericoides? #nativeplants #prairie
Enlarged “buds” or unopened capitula with enlarged involucres on heath aster Close-up of previous
September 1, 2025 at 11:50 AM
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I MISS MY FRIEND! Damn it.
Thistle and me on her last day. Napping with Thistle on the vintage sofa at the up north cabin. Thistle on marmot and pika watch in the Sangre de Cristos as we feed our oldest. Thistle and I on the pasqueflower hill of Ulrickson dry prairie
September 1, 2025 at 12:41 AM
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At 16.5 or 17 years of age it's come time to say goodbye to Thistle. With us always through good and bad, milestones, transitions, and the mundane. A very good dog, friend, member of the family. Lots of short sunny walks today and tomorrow, and the best bits, which are all she'll eat.
These pictures simply show a very good dog (a beagle mix) in happy places...on the trail and laying in the grass on a splendid spring day. These pictures simply show a very good dog (a beagle mix) in happy places...on the trail and laying in the grass on a splendid spring day.
August 26, 2025 at 2:04 PM
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This led me to Parks et al. (2025, www.nature.com/articles/s41...). which in turn led me to this figure, which is brilliant and on the money.
"This conceptual model generally applies to dry conifer forests in western North America, formerly red pine dominated forests in the southeastern boreal forest, and temperate broadleaf and conifer woodlands and forests of the eastern United States. Prior to ~1880, traditional burning and lightning-ignited fires contributed to an active historical fire regime with frequent, lower-severity fires that produced tree-ring fire scars, cumulatively burned a relatively large area, and maintained low fuel loads, thereby serving as a stabilizing (negative) feedback88. The gradual increase in annual area burned from 1600 to 1880 may have resulted from a warming climate at the end of the Little Ice Age136 and is generally based on Marlon et al.7, although this pattern may manifest due to reduced records in the earlier periods of analysis137. The onset of sustained fire exclusion and suppression over many decades reduced annual area burned, reflected by a decline in tree-ring fire scars, during which time fuel loads accumulated. At present, fires generally burn during pronounced droughts, increasing the area burned in recent years, although total area burned remains below historical levels. Contemporary fires in historically frequent fire forests now often act as a destabilizing (positive) feedback88, with tremendous social-ecological effects through smoke impacts, reduced community safety, and diminished forest recovery. The future is uncertain and depends on management actions, social decisions and priorities, and climate change. Figure credit: Jessie Thoreson."
August 22, 2025 at 12:37 AM
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"Forest soils" is a bit of a misnomer in this area. Original land survey notes for transects passing over those lighter areas describe the land outside "marsh" as timbered with oak, but with undergrowth of redroot (New Jersey Tea), rosin weed, rose, and willow (probably prairie willow).
Original land survey notes for the town (and county) line in this area that describes land: "Land except marsh rolloing second rate--bur, white, yellow, and black oak. Red root, rosin weed, etc."
August 20, 2025 at 11:24 AM
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Miles of burn piles below, around, and above Taos Ski Valley in the Carson National Forest in the wake of 2021's massive blowdown event. In some areas the piles have been burned. The scale of the effort is pretty unfathomable. The high country looks nothing like it did last time I was up there...
Burn piles six to ten feet wide by five to six feet tall in the Carson national forest above Taos Ski Valley, with an average spacing propably around 25 ft. This goes on literally for miles from below the Ski Valley up almost to Bull of the Woods. Blowdown in the wilderness area where debris has not been consolidated into piles. The effort to reopen these trails was massive. Large conifer trunks litter the ground like match sticks. Many trees tipped over. Others were snapped in the middle.
August 15, 2025 at 11:33 PM
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Parry's mountain gentians (Gentiana parryi) and felwort (Gentianella amarella)...I think...are going full tilt in the high meadows of the Sangre de Cristos in N. New Mexico.
A cluster of three large, lush, cerulean Parry's gentian flowers opening into the sunshine. Small, star-shaped, pale purple flowers of felwort opening in axillary clusters.
August 15, 2025 at 8:02 PM
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Hole in tall prairie vegetation where rope dodder (Cuscuta glomerata) is hammering tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) & sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus). Rope dodder favors composites, esp. long-rhizomatous goldenrods (tall, Canada, giant) & sunflowers. #nativeplants #prairie
Area of low prairie vegetation where tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus) have been weakened by rope dodder (Cuscuta glomerata). Rope dodder infloerescence twisting arround a sawtooth sunflower stem like a coil of rope. It's vegetative vines can be seen senescing and turning brown already, which happens after the dodder has seized its host and begun to flower.
July 24, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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Check out the dewpoints in NW Illinois. Low to middle 80s Fahrenheit. Dewpoints! The effect of well-watered corn and peak evapotranspiration. At the NWS office near where I live (SE WI), the peak dewpoint so far today is 80.2F.
Map showing dewpoints and temperatures at varieous stations in NW Illinois. Most dewpoints are 80F or above, and temperatures are in the upper 80s to low 90s F. In Freeport the dewpoint is 85F!
July 23, 2025 at 6:36 PM
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Minuartia michauxii growing out of a bitching soil biological crust of terricolous lichen (need to try and figure out which) on a dry, dolomite gravel hill prairie in SE WI. This prairie is frequently burned, so thatch doesn't smother the crust, and fire intensity is low (low fuel loads)...
Spiky foliage of a small clump of Minuartii michauxii growing out of the textured and complex surface of a soil biological crust. Dark terricolous lichen with paler reproductive structures, the main component of this soil biological crust. General view of prairie hillside where little bluestem is the dominant grass. Crusts and Minuartia grow in the space between the grass clumps.
July 19, 2025 at 11:28 AM
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The Baltimore checkerspots are out in my neck of the woods. I saw this one this morning while doing some work to keep hybrid cattail at bay from the sedge meadow their local host plant, Chelone glabra, depends on.
A black, orange, and white patterned Baltimore Checkerspot buttefly spreads its wings while perched on upward-facing surface of a spotted Joe-Pye weed leaf.
July 9, 2025 at 10:17 PM
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Been working on a site for two years, and still finding remnant populations species that should be conspicuous AND that I've been looking for. Today #293 and #294 were Cleland's evening primrose (pictured, Oenothera clelandii) and stiff goldenrod (Oligoneuron rigidum)...
Flower of Cleland's evening primrose (Oenothera clelandii) showing diamond shape petal and anthers and stigma exerted similarly vs. stigma exceding anthers as in Oenothera rhombipetala. General erect habit of Oenothera clelandii. Leaves are narrower than the common Oenothera biennis.
July 8, 2025 at 1:26 AM
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The new neighbors up at the lake are drunk and obnoxious at dawn, but the sky is pretty.
Rose glow of sunrise under dying showers over a northern Wisconsin lake
July 4, 2025 at 10:45 AM
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I also wonder if maybe things used to drain around to the north vs. the present route to the south. It at least looks like Jericho Creek used to go that way before it cut south just east of Eagle Spring Lake (which is impounded and used to be much smaller and mostly open wetland). A lot going on!
Hillsahde map showing broader context, drumlin fields to the northwest and NE, beds of old pro-glacial lakes, etc. Hillshade zoomed out slightly showing where drainage along Jericho Creek corridor emptied into broader valley. (top just left of middle)
July 3, 2025 at 5:26 PM
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The center of this area (August, 1956 photo) are Chelsea sand, which conditions on the ground line up with, but this photo appears to show much of the area farmed, planted with an August-ripening cereal crop, and differential ripening patterns caused maybe by an underlying alluvial fan? 1/
August, 1956 air photo from the Mukwonago River Corridor in the vicinity of the T/Eagle / T/Mukwonago line (the N/S fence line in this photo). The central area appears cropped (maybe spring wheat or barley?), but the cropped has differential ripening patterns (seen as light vs. dark) which reflect underlying geology. Soils are Chelse sand, but there appear to be underlying channels similar to what one migh see associated with an alluvial fan. Present vegetation is recovering black oak barrens. Species like Asclepias amplexicaulis, Asclepias viridiflora, Crocanthemum canadense, Lechea stricta, Hieracium longipilum, Liatris aspera, and Lithospermum caroliniense have spontaneously recolonized this area from edges following agricultural abandonment.
July 3, 2025 at 1:33 PM
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A small prairie unit we burned last March at the UWM-Waukesha Field Station.
Vivid orange of butterfly milkweed and hundreds of pink pale purple coneflowers
June 28, 2025 at 11:55 PM